_Speculum_ from its shelf in the college library I found it in the same
virgin condition in which it had lain on the table of Matthew Makepeace
on that fatal afternoon in August, 1604. No living soul had disturbed
its repose for over 300 years. It was evidently the same copy: perhaps
no other was ever issued. As I turned its pages a scrap of paper
fluttered to the floor. It had been torn from the bottom corner of
pages 273-4. On it was written in minute Greek letters an inscription
which I translate:
“Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and
wills with earnestness.”
Thankfull Thomas
A passage in the lately edited _Diary of George Evans_, 1649-1658, has
called my attention to a singular and, I believe, unrecorded episode in
the history of Jesus College.
With Mr. Evans himself the story is not concerned. It is sufficient
to say that he was appointed to a fellowship at Jesus in 1650 by the
Committee for Reforming the Universities, in place of an expelled
Presbyterian. He was, as his name suggests, a Welshman, of the county
of Radnor, and, of course, an Independent. He vacated his fellowship,
on his marriage, in 1654, and retired to the living of Marston Monceux,
co. Salop. He held the incumbency until his death, in 1672, having
conformed at the Restoration.
The portion of his diary which has awaked my interest relates to the
date June 11, 1652. For its explanation it is necessary to state that
ten years previously, just before the outbreak of the Civil War,
the College had taken a quantity of its plate from the Treasury and
delivered it to a certain Mr. John Poley, by him to be conveyed to His
Majesty, who was then at Nottingham. As the whole society was under
menace of expulsion before the end of 1642, they took the precaution,
before quitting the College, of concealing the rest of the plate, as
well as the chapel organ. This organ had been introduced in 1634 by
the Master, Richard Sterne, who was Archbishop Laud’s chaplain, and
had actively promoted his plans for the re-organisation of church
ritual in the University. It was a small chamber instrument, easily
transportable. When the new society, consisting of Presbyterians
introduced by the Earl of Manchester, entered the College in January,
1643, they noted in the Treasury Book that they could only discover
three pieces of plate. Entries in the Bursar’s Book in the year 1652
record that the rest of the plate was discovered in that year, and at a
rather later date the organ was brought to light.
Some further notes respecting the Chapel in Commonwealth days will
serve to explain certain points in the history which I have been able
to unravel. The older of the two existing bells in the tower was cast
by Christopher Gray in 1659. It took the place of another which was
of pre-Reformation date and had probably served the Nunnery of Saint
Radegund. This was a heavy tenor bell, and had apparently belonged to a
set of four, named after the evangelists. It bore the emblem of Saint
Mark, a lion, and the inscription in ancient lettering--
=Celorvm Marce resonet tvvs ympnvs in Arce.=
This bell, for many years previous to 1652, had been disused owing to
the weakness of its frame and of the supporting floor.
The passage, above referred to, in George Evans’ diary runs as follows:
“June 11 [1652]. Present yᵉ Master, Mr. Woodcocke and Mr. Machin,
fellows, with Mr. Thomas Buck, Thankfull Thomas and Robert Hitchcock
digging, we digged up yᵉ treasury plate hidd in yᵉ Masters orchard.
In all were seventeen peeces (then follows a list). Searched till
prayers. But Quaerendm whether there be not yit other peeces and yᵉ
treasure hidd by yᵉ former societie. Thomas saith Mr. Germyn cld
avouch for more.”
On reading this extract, the name--for such it seemed to be--Thankfull
Thomas, at once arrested my attention. It reminded me of a partially
obliterated inscription on a flat gravestone which lies at the crossing
of the transepts, close to the south-west pier of the tower--that one
which is distinguished from the other piers by a dog-tooth moulding.
The letters are so worn by treading that they can only be distinguished
in certain lights, and indeed have altogether disappeared on the side
of the stone which is furthest from the pier-base. What remains is to
be read:--
=nkfull
mas=
followed by a date of which the figures =652= are legible.
I have searched the Register of the College for such a name, but,
though it is complete for the years preceding 1652, I have been unable
to find it. But in the College Order Book I have found, among other
appointments of the year 1650, an entry, “Thomas constitutus est Custos
Templi.” From which it would seem that Thomas was the surname of the
Independent official corresponding to a verger or chapel-clerk. It is
singular that he should have been buried, among Masters and Fellows, in
such a conspicuous place in the Chapel.
The discovery of the plate in the Master’s orchard--brought about
through the agency of Mr. Thomas Buck, of Catharine Hall, who was
one of the Esquire Bedells--was matter for disappointment as much
as congratulation to the Master and Fellows. They had a convinced
belief that a much larger quantity of treasure remained concealed in
some quarter of the College, and, as the passage in the diary shows,
Thankfull Thomas suggested that Mr. Germyn probably knew something of
the matter. Of him it is necessary to say a few words.
Gervase Germyn, of the county of Huntingdon, was admitted to the
College in 1621, and in 1652 must have been a man of middle age. He
was a Master of Arts, unmarried, and resided in Cambridge. He was not
one of the expelled Fellows. He had acted as organist and choir-master
in the mastership of Richard Sterne, and was passionately devoted to
church music. After the removal of the organ and the installation of
the new Master and Fellows, in 1643, his connection with the College
ceased. He was miserably poor and supported himself by teaching music.
His small, spare figure was ordinarily dressed in a thread-bare garb of
semi-clerical appearance, and he had a quaintness of manner and speech
which induced the belief that he was not of ordinary sanity.
Thankfull Thomas particularly disliked him. Gervase had a tone of
superiority in addressing him which was the more galling because what
he said was only remotely intelligible to the sexton; and he had a
disagreeable habit of meddling with what he considered to be the duties
and prerogatives of his office. Germyn must have possessed a key to the
Chapel, for he was constantly presenting himself there at unexpected
times, often late in the evening. He had a distracting habit of roaming
about the building, and, as Thomas thought, spying on his actions from
unseen quarters. Thomas had seen him looking down on him from the Nuns’
gallery in the north transept, or high up in the tower arcade.
Thomas took note of these circumstances and kept his knowledge to
himself. His cupidity was aroused by the thought of the hidden
treasure, and he was perfectly convinced that the clue to its discovery
lay with Germyn. As it was useless to question him directly he resorted
to a system of counter-espial.
His attention was particularly drawn to the Chapel tower, where he had
more than once detected Germyn’s presence. The arcaded storey beneath
the belfry is reached by a dark, winding stair in the wall at the
north-east angle of the north transept. The staircase emerges, at a
considerable height, on a Norman gallery, which, at the time of which
I am speaking, was not protected on the transept side by a railing.
Thomas was a timid man, and he made this alarming passage clutching
each pillar as he passed it. Then another stair in the tower pier led
up to the arcaded gallery, and there the inner communication stopped. A
door in the north arcade opened on the roof of the transept, from which
a dizzy ladder ascended to the belfry window. The ladder gave Thomas
pause. It was old, weather-worn and crazy, and, unless by the light
figure of Germyn, had perhaps never been scaled for a generation. The
silent belfry above, encompassed by wheeling jackdaws, was a terror
to his weak nerves. Even from the floor below he could see the gaping
rottenness of its rafters: so he let it alone.
Secure on the Chapel floor he began his researches. In his vacant
moments he roamed about chancel, transepts and nave, beating the walls
and trampling the flags, if perchance he might light on some recess
wherein the treasure was contained. At first his curiosity was excited
by certain crosses graved on the nave floor. He did not know that they
marked the processional path of the Saint Radegund nuns. But he could
detect no sound of hollowness beneath them. Finally, he fastened his
mind on a large, unmarked stone, next the south-west pier of the tower.
Here, and in no other part of the Chapel, there was distinct evidence
that a vault of some kind existed. Above it the disused bell-rope was
attached to the pier.
[Illustration: _Norman Gallery, North Transept._]
Often, when the Chapel was closed after service hours, he scrutinised
this stone. It had no mark of recent disturbance, but in ten years it
was likely that any such indication had been obliterated. One summer
evening in 1652 he was so engaged, and kneeling on the stone, when he
was startled by the sudden falling of a shadow. He sprang to his feet
and beheld Gervase Germyn.
“Good evening, friend,” said Germyn. “You work late. I was visiting
some old friends that lie under the stones here, having a word with
him or him that I have known, a remembered jest with one, a snatch of
old song with another--who knows what? And here are you at the like
business. And who, pray, is your friend?”
“Master Germyn,” replied Thomas stiffly, “an idle man may talk to dead
men, if he will: a sexton has other business with them. How often am I
to bid you not to meddle in my affairs?”
“You are very right,” said Germyn, “and now I perceive this is no man’s
grave--yet. Perhaps the sexton is looking to make it one. And which,
pray, of my friends, the new Fellows, has gone to his audit? Or is it
to be mine, perhaps, or thine: and I think it be thine indeed, for I
find thee lying on it. But you don’t know the Prince of Denmark: else
I should ask you the clown’s riddle, ‘What is he that builds stronger
than either the mason, the ship-wright, or the carpenter?’ It is a
pretty riddle to ask within walls that are five hundred years old.”
“I make no graves,” answered Thomas, “and I have no time or patience
for your riddles. I only ask you to begone.”
“Is the trade then so slack, friend Thomas, and is there none to give
the sexton employment?--none of all that dig for death as for hid
treasure, and some, perhaps, who dig for treasure and find death.”
Thomas was startled at the hint that his purpose was detected. He
looked dubiously on the speaker, and the thought dawned on him that
perhaps Germyn was offering himself as a confederate. “Treasure,” he
said slowly; “yes, if you talk of treasure there is more sense in you
than I thought. I don’t know but what we might find it together; and
a poor man, such as you, might have his fair share, and none be the
wiser.”
“You are wholly mistaken,” said Germyn, “if you think that I know
anything of the treasure that you are looking for: and, if I knew, God
forbid that I should rob the dead of their trust. No, let them keep it
until the day of restitution, when their friends claim it of them. You
are a bold man, Thomas, to think of the dead as if they had no sense of
what happens to-day. For my part, though we talk as old friends, I have
a dreadful awe of them: they can do so much, and I can’t hurt them, if
I would. It is a marvel to me that you can walk and work at such an
hour in a place that is so full of voices and presences. A holy man you
should be! Do you know how Goodman Deane, the last man who held your
office, died?”
“They tell me he died distracted. But I don’t trouble myself with
fancies.”
“It was in August, two years since. What had he seen? What had he
heard? They say that in his wanderings he often repeated ‘I should have
rung, I should have rung.’ And I think I see his meaning. It is an old
belief--God knows what of truth there is in it--that at the ringing of
the church bell the congregations of the dead break up and give place
to the living. Poor Deane! Mark could not speak for him: he has been
dumb these twenty years, though one day, please God, he will speak
again for his friends--of whom you are not one. And there is another
old fancy that belongs to this church, and perhaps had something to do
with Deane’s matter. It used to be told among the old society, that
are scattered or dead now, that the festival of the Name of Jesus was
a great day with the old dead folk. Each year at midnight on that day,
which is the seventh of August, they assemble--men or women, I know not
which--here in the church to observe the hour of Lauds. It was said
that you could hear them trooping down from their chambers outside by a
stair that does not exist, and they came through the church wall by a
door that is unseen. Then, each in order, they rank themselves on the
crosses that mark this pavement, and go round the church in darkness,
for they need no lights. Their singing has been often heard, but I do
not know that living eye has seen their procession, unless it were
Deane’s, and, it seems, he did not live long after.”
“It is a curious fancy, truly,” said Thomas, “if one could credit it.
But I don’t know why you tell it me, as I never visit the church after
nightfall. And little as I believe your tale, I believe you less when
you tell me that you know nothing of this treasure. But I spoke of it
at a venture, and it is none of my business. So I leave you to your
ghosts.”
* * * * *
Thankfull Thomas was not courageous, but his fears were not of a
sentimental order. He was more than ever convinced that Germyn knew
the secret of the hidden treasure, and that his story was a device to
prevent him from continuing his search for it; and he had made up his
mind that it lay under the stone where Germyn had interrupted him. At
night he would be secure from his interference, and would have time to
lift the stone and replace it in such a manner as to leave no trace of
its disturbance. And as the date which Germyn had mentioned had passed
out of his mind, it so happened that August 7 was the night which he
chose for his enterprise.
[Illustration: _South West Pier of Tower._]
It was past eleven when he entered the church with lantern and tools.
The stone was heavy, and it took a considerable time to dislodge and
lift it. Beneath it he saw a vault, some five feet deep. He lowered his
lamp into it. Great was his disappointment to find it blankly empty. He
had so fastened his expectations on this particular spot that hardly
yet could he think himself mistaken. He let himself down into the vault
that he might explore for some recess in its walls or floor.
He was still groping in semi-gloom when, above his head, he caught the
sound of quiet treading, and then a waft of strange music. He was too
unskilled to tell what the instrument might be, but the sound of it was
soft and pleasant. It rose, and died away, and rose again in fitful
strains. Then it went on in a continuous melody and was taken up by a
voice peculiarly sweet and clear--so clear that the words were plainly
distinguishable. “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then
were we like unto them that dream.”
Thomas listened in amazement till the psalm ended and silence returned.
Then he heard the shuffling of descending steps, and with a sudden
horror he remembered the story of the dead men’s staircase and the
phantom procession. He heard a door softly open in the dark transept,
and he sprang wildly to the bell-rope above his head. One frightful
clang: Mark spoke again after twenty years of silence: a rumble and
a roar: the heavy bell splintered itself on the floor beneath, and
Thankfull Thomas, in a pool of blood, lay in the grave of his own
making.
* * * * *
In a corner of the belfry, where the floor was not broken by the
falling bell, they discovered the organ, which had been hidden there
since 1642.
* * * * *
The Restoration brought back a few survivors of the expelled Society
of 1642, and with them Gervase Germyn. But in 1664 I find that George
Loosemore was master of the College choristers, and Germyn was dead.
At what precise date he died I cannot say. But one thing is known.
The Chapel, after long neglect and misappropriation, was repaired,
decorated and restored to Anglican usage about the year 1663. The
reconciliation of the Church was marked by a choral service, and Germyn
occupied his old seat at the organ. Among the psalms chosen for the
service was the 126th, _In convertendo captivitatem Sion_. The singers
had reached the last verse--“He that now goeth on his way weeping and
beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy and bring
his sheaves with him.” There the organ accompaniment faltered, failed,
died, and left the choir to chant the _Gloria_ unassisted. The grey
head of Gervase Germyn lay on the key-board, and the College had to
seek a new organist.
The Palladium
On an unspecified morning in the year 1026, in the reign of Cnut, king,
of happy memory, Aethelstan, abbat of Ramsey, delivered to the monks of
his Benedictine household, in chapter assembled, an address which had
notable consequences.
The reverend father took as the text of his discourse the verse, _in
libro Regum tertio_, which in our Authorised Version is expressed--Know
ye not that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not
out of the hand of the King of Syria?
With the ghostly lessons to be drawn from this passage we need not
concern ourselves: indeed they were but lightly touched upon by the
abbat. He turned almost directly to practical matters.
He dwelt feelingly on the palpable evidences of the poverty of their
household--the bell-tower of their church, which had fallen in sudden
ruin, and which the means of their household did not permit them
to rebuild: the indecent sordidness of their chapter-house, within
whose mud-built walls they were then assembled: the meagreness of the
monastic diet, of which his brethren were the last to complain, but
which reflected unfavourably on the coldness of Christian charity in
the laity of the neighbourhood. And incidentally he contrasted these
conditions with the splendour of the new temple, adorned with goodly
stones and gifts, which their beloved friends at Ely had erected since
the Danish wars had ended: the ephods of purple and scarlet affected
by the ministers in Saint Etheldreda’s church: and the proverbial
magnificence of Ely feasts.
He asked himself the cause of this contrast, and with humility he
confessed that it lay in the remissness of himself and his venerable
predecessors in the abbatial seat of Ramsey. He commended to the
attention of his hearers a text, _in fine libri Josue_, in which it
was recorded that the children of Israel had brought up the bones
of Joseph with them from Egypt, and that the said bones had become
the inheritance of the children of Joseph: and he enlarged on the
advantages, pecuniary as well as spiritual, which undoubtedly rewarded
those children.
What had Ramsey done to emulate an example so worthy? Nothing, or next
to nothing. At a cost relatively small they had, indeed, procured
from an ignorant rustic, who had dug them up at the town of Slepe,
some bones which competent authority declared to be those of the
Persian bishop, Saint Yvo. But, whether or not the cause lay in some
lack of orthodoxy in this oriental prelate, it must be confessed
that his remains had not been so miraculously effectual in procuring
the liberality of the laity as had been anticipated. He ventured to
suggest that the relics of a local saint might be more successful. He
casually drew their attention in this matter to the example of the holy
brethren of Ely. Not content with their heritage of the bones of Saint
Etheldreda and the virgins, her relatives, they had recently forcibly
detained and appropriated a consignment of the remains of Aednoth,
bishop of Dorchester, addressed to Ramsey Abbey and belonging of right
to it. While he did not defend the methods of their Ely brethren, he
must applaud their conspicuous and practical piety.
The abbat deplored the circumstance that the vicinity of their abbey
had produced no saint of such eminent merits as to transmit to his
remains the powers that should evoke the faith and the funds so
necessary to their present needs. As an illustration of the spirit
which he would like to find among his own brethren he again invited
their attention to the religious activity of their friends at Ely,
who had despatched a naval and military force as far as Dereham, in
Norfolk, and with tumult of war had abstracted from the church there
the shrine and body of Saint Withburga, virgin. In fact the pious
solicitude of their friends had sometimes carried them to lengths
which, making the widest allowance for the purity of their motives,
the abbat could not regard as otherwise than regrettable. In the
recent Danish troubles the brethren of Saint Alban’s had committed to
the safe keeping of the Ely monks the shrine containing the relics of
the great Protomartyr of Britain. At the restoration of peace the Ely
people had, indeed, returned the chest, but they afterwards maintained
that they had substituted in it the remains of a less sacred person and
had kept Saint Alban in their church. The Saint Alban’s brotherhood
on their part asserted that, from a conscientious regard for the
sanctity of their trust, they had thought well not to part with the
veritable person of their tutelar saint, but to employ the pardonable
stratagem of enclosing an inferior substitute in the shrine despatched
to Ely. But the point in dispute was immaterial, inasmuch as the Ely
relics, to whomsoever they had originally appertained, had contributed
largely to the prosperity of that household, while the event proved
that the proprietary interests of Saint Alban’s had been in no degree
prejudiced. Blind Isaac bestowed the same blessing of earth’s fatness
on supplanting Jacob and on first-born Esau. Charity and prudence
alike dictated that, in the hearing of the giver, there should be no
contention between brotherly households about a birth-right which, for
all practical uses, each of them possessed in its integrity.
To what did the abbat’s observations tend? At the obscure church of
Soham, Cambs., unworthy receptacle of so divine a treasure, rested
what had been mortal of Saint Felix, bishop and evangelist of the East
Angles. The bishop of the diocese in which Ramsey was situated, at
the abbat’s instance, had procured royal letters patent authorising
the Ramsey monks to transfer the sacred remains to their conventual
church. Far be it from him to suggest such violent courses as had, in
some measure, clouded the effulgent zeal of their Ely neighbours. The
Soham folk, if properly approached, would, no doubt, show themselves
compliant to the King’s will, and would be eager to collaborate in a
work so happily inspired. He requested the chapter to express its views
as to the proper methods of attaining their pious object of putting the
bell-tower in a condition of permanent stability.
Prior Alfwin rose and, protesting veneration for his Superior, ventured
to offer some remarks which, he trusted, would not be regarded as
derogating from the respect due to the abbatial chair. Fraternal
affection had, in his opinion, betrayed the Lord Abbat into an estimate
of the character of the Ely people which was not warranted by the
facts. The prior regarded them as sons of Belial. By what instinct of
the Devil the holy father, Saint Aethelwold, had induced King Edgar to
endow their monastery with wealth so disproportioned to their merits
it was not for him to surmise. Among the estates so granted was the
manor of Soham. There could be no doubt that, if they got wind of the
proposed translation of their saint, the Soham men would fight. It
would ill become their sacred calling to employ the carnal weapons to
which the Ely brigands had resorted. “Let us rather,” said the prior,
“attain our ends by friendly gifts and such arts as are permissible to
our peaceful profession--wine, for instance, or beer.” The rest of the
prior’s observations were directed to a discussion of the properties of
poppy, mandragora and other soporific herbs.